


Solitary Conversations

by Winterling42



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Sun & The Cluster, angry sun is my fave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 13:54:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4351394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sun can't seem to get a moment alone to grieve. Nomi offers ice cream, and Wolfgang makes a promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solitary Conversations

**Author's Note:**

> please be kind, this is my very first post you guys. i have no clue what i'm doing.

After the third time she woke, Sun gave up on sleeping. It wasn’t nightmares keeping her awake, as far as she could tell. It had been a long time since her dreams had been frightening enough to keep her up.

For once she was sitting in her own bed, seeing her own cell, small and dull as it was. It was two weeks after Riley’s rescue, but the tension between the eight of them had relaxed like a snapped rubber band. Sun still caught glimpses of sunlight on water, skyscrapers in smog, a balcony covered in fake grass…

But none of them pressed in on her; she could ignore them if she wanted to. Her sleeping brain, however, seemed incapable of tuning them out, and so every time one of the others got close… she woke up. So far it had been Nomi and Kala who had dropped by. Sun didn’t think they had any more choice in the matter than she did, but neither of them had stayed for longer than a minute. Perhaps they sensed the mood she was in.

No one else in the prison seemed to. Since Joong-ki’s visit, Sun had not spoken more than three words together, but she had spoken far more eloquently with her fists. So here she sat, in solitary (again) for fighting (again), and she still couldn’t manage more than a few hours to herself. 

Kala had tried to comfort her. Tell her that none of this was her fault, that everything would be alright. Sun knew better. There were only two people left in the world who knew the truth, and the authorities were hardly likely to believe the woman with the signed confession. Everything would _not_ be alright.

Nomi had been quieter. She’d taken her time to explore the cell (what a joke), leaning out the window to look down the blank hallway and then turning back to the blank room and the blank person inside it. At least Nomi didn’t say she’d been to prison before - Sun knew that she had been, and that the idea of saying it went through the American’s head. But at least she didn’t say it out loud. 

“Wow,” she’d said instead. “This is cozy.”

“Like a second home,” Sun had sighed, studying her bruised knuckles. 

“Come with me instead,” Nomi walked over to take Sun’s hand in hers. “We’re getting ice cream.”

And they were walking up a street in San Francisco, the late-afternoon sun shining on the bay behind them. Amanita and Nomi were holding hands, grinning at each other. Nomi looked over to Sun, holding out her other hand. 

And she took them back to the prison, a minor exertion of her will, and they were surrounded by cold concrete again. Nomi frowned with her whole face, not just her mouth– it was in the way her forehead wrinkled and the corners of her eyes turned down in concern. If Sun hadn’t been so annoyed, she would have been able to focus on how much the expression tugged at her heart.

“Aren’t you both wanted fugitives?” Sun asked, pretending that she hadn’t been tempted to walk in the hot afternoon. “What made you think getting _ice cream_ was a good idea?”

“We’re being careful, Sun,” Nomi protested. “Neither of us could stand being locked up in the apartment–“ she stopped talking the moment she realized what she’d been saying, and Sun smiled. 

“At least it was probably my nerves you were feeling,” she said, projecting calm into her voice. “Enjoy your ice cream, Nomi.”

“I–“ Nomi started to argue, but she must have felt the irritation surging in her direction, and she’d left without another careless word. 

Sun had nursed her impatience with the hacker, feeling the edge of grief creeping up underneath it. Gritting her teeth, she’d forced herself into a meditative state, and from there it was possible, if not easy, to slip back into sleep. Denial was so much easier than facing what she couldn’t, at least until she was out of this box again and could go back to expressing herself as she always had. 

Only now she was awake again. At least this time she knew what had brought him here; the desire for revenge undercut by bitter grief was one thing she and Wolfgang shared. She could feel it bouncing back and forth between them, until she wasn’t sure who was standing with their back against the wall and who was lying on their side, cheek pressed to gritty concrete. 

“What do you want?” she asked, and sat up. 

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” 

He laughed, and despite her track record tonight, Sun found herself smiling back at him. It wasn’t so much a smile as it was a curl of her upper lip, but it was an expression that spoke more of camaraderie than antagonism, and that was more than she could say for most of her conversations tonight. 

Wolfgang came to sit beside her, and somewhere else, on a rooftop in Berlin, they both dangled their feet off into space. “We’re not going to let you rot in here, you know.”  
He seemed to have no problem with the cell walls, and in fact she could feel the traitorous unwinding of his shoulders that meant safety. He thought of a prison as safe? Sun filed the thought away for later, and allowed the echo of that feeling to relax her own muscles. 

“And what exactly do you think you can do about it?” she asked, her smile cynical this time. “The only other person who knew the truth outside these walls is my brother, and he is not likely to help you.” She was furious at Joong-ki. Of course she was; it was the kind of rage that had always left her opponents bleeding on the floor, only multiplied by ten thousand. If she ever got her hands on that rat… but she couldn’t get to him, and she wouldn’t be able to for a long time. And it was easy to hide her grief inside the anger. 

“Maybe if you’d listen to one of us for more than a few minutes, you’d know what we’re planning. But we do need your help.” Wolfgang reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, showing her the heavy pistol still tucked into his pocket. “None of us can speak Korean.” He added, tapping the last cigarette out of the pack and offering it to her. 

“Will it be you smoking this, or will I?” She asked, feeling another notch of tension unknot itself from her spine just at the thought. 

“Does it matter?” Wolfgang snorted, searching for a lighter in his pockets. 

“Maybe,” Sun sighed, studying the small white cylinder in her fingers. The two of them lapsed into an uneasy quiet as he lit the cigarette for her, and she inhaled the warm smoke with the chilly Berlin air. Her bare feet tapped against the wall of the building, and she looked out across the lights of a strange city. It was so different from home, but when she caught sight of the Fernsehturm out of the corner of her eye, it felt…comfortable. Like patting the pockets of an old coat to make sure nothing had fallen out.

“My father is dead because of me,” she said it as if talking about the weather, like it didn’t mean anything. 

Wolfgang snorted and held out a hand for the cigarette. “So’s mine.” 

If there was a better way to banish the edges of her grief, Sun couldn’t think of one. She glared at Wolfgang, the fingers of her free hand tightening into a fist. He only chuckled; a dry, bitter sound that went with the crooked, mirthless smile he gave her. 

“You shouldn’t have come to me for _comfort_ ,” he said.

“Maybe it was not comfort I needed.” Sun took another drag of the cigarette, fighting for control of her anger. It had only been three days, but her discipline had fallen to pieces in the wake of Joong-ki’s (second) betrayal. 

“Then why am I the only one of us you’ve spoken to for more than thirty seconds?” Wolfgang reached over and plucked the cigarette from her hand, careless of the embers that brushed across his palm. For a moment Sun felt them burn.

“You understand,” she said simply. 

“You’re going to kill your brother,” he answered, sighing out smoke. Will would have sighed in disappointment, and Lito would have sighed because it was the theatrical thing to do, and Capheus would have sighed in sadness that she would not abandon this path. Wolfgang sighed with the steady air of someone with a job to do, a job he would enjoy finishing. 

“Yes,” Sun felt the answer leave her throat as if a physical weight had been lifted from her chest. Saying it out loud meant it was real, and saying it to Wolfgang meant it would be done. 

He nodded, took another pull of the halfway-gone cigarette, handed it back to her. Sun accepted without hesitation, filling the sudden lightness in her chest with smoke. “You’re going to have to let the others help,” he said, after another silent minute. “I learned that the hard way.”

Sun glanced over, watching his expression as keenly as she reached out to feel his emotions. There was guilt, that he had needed any help at all, that he had pulled Kala of all people to that house. There was a fatalism that bordered on despair underneath the guilt; he had refused to see or hear her since then, though none of them was very good at blocking each other out yet. Sun found herself hoping, despite her reticence over the past few days, that it was something none of them ever learned. 

Most of all, Wolfgang burned with a confused awe, that these people he had never met would save his life again and again. His life, which he himself refused to consider valuable. Sun blinked, and they were back in the cell, though she hadn’t been the one to bring them there. Wolfgang stared at her, and it wasn’t annoyance so much as an overwhelming _knowing_ in his eyes that made her look away.

“Find what you were looking for?” He asked, his voice harsh and grating against the concrete walls. 

“You want me to accept their help, and of course I will,” Sun said, passing him the cigarette. “It’s not like that sort of aid is easy to refuse.”

“There’s nothing we do that we do alone, now,” he said, tone turning rueful. “Nothing important, anyway. If one of us hurts, we all hurt. I’m not saying we involve the rest of the cluster once you’re out, but,” Wolfgang shrugged. “ _All_ of them understand what you have to do, Sun.”

“And how is that?” She could think of plenty of their fellow sensates who would be appalled at her fixation on revenge. 

“Because we feel it too,” Wolfgang flicked the butt of the cigarette over the side of the building. When he looked back up at her, the crooked smile was back on his face. But it was softer now, somehow. “I know you’ve helped us before. Let us help you, and I swear even if the others can’t, I’ll help you kill your brother.”

Sun gave a noncommittal sort of hum, but she felt her agreement resonate down their bond anyway. Wolfgang stood, brushing off the back of his jeans. 

“Thank you,” she felt the words bubble out of her without really meaning to let them, but there was the briefest moment when surprise turned his expression into a happy one, and Sun was astonished by the change. 

“You’re welcome,” he said, lifting his chin as if daring her to comment, sliding back into his cold cynic’s shell.

And she was alone again, trapped again, tired again. Sun closed her eyes, leaned back against the wall, and felt inside herself for the fizzy, not-quite-nameable connections that she could never manage to find on purpose. She could tell they were there, that was all. And for the first time in over two weeks, she was happy about it. 

_Listen to this,_ she thought at the prison, too tired to be furious. _I am not alone. And you cannot hold all eight of us._


End file.
